As Temperatures Plunge, Call to Keep New York’s Homeless Off Streets Has Little Impact

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A homeless man named Clarence, 54, waiting for the subway Tuesday morning. He said he had been asked if he wanted to be taken to a shelter, but said he had bad experiences with them.CreditChristopher Lee for The New York Times

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo says the plight of homeless people on freezing city streets is a moral issue that demands immediate action. Mayor Bill de Blasio promises that New York City workers are out looking for anyone in danger and are there to offer help.

But even as the political talk has intensified — with the governor and the mayor engaged in yet another dispute over who is doing more on the issue — Antonio Poudreau has not noticed much change on the streets.

Mr. Poudreau, 19, from Staten Island, said he took to the streets after his mother died and he could not find a place to live.

As the temperature dropped below freezing on Monday night and the winds howled, he sought shelter in an A.T.M. lobby of a TD Bank in Midtown Manhattan until he was evicted by the police.

Shortly after dawn, he found himself back outside, shaking inside the blanket he had wrapped around his body.

He said the police were polite but did not offer to take him to a shelter.

“They didn’t lock us up or nothing; they just asked us to leave,” Mr. Poudreau said. “If they get me back into a shelter I’ll take it. It’s better than out here.”

As of 8 a.m. Tuesday, the authorities had taken 97 people off the streets and put them into shelters or hospitals. An additional 101 people living on the streets sought care at emergency rooms.

“As in previous years, city outreach teams scoured neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs last night to help bring New Yorkers out of the cold,” Mr. de Blasio said in a statement.

Mr. de Blasio also announced the appointment of Herminia Palacio as the deputy mayor for health and human services, and she vowed to continue to improve efforts to help the homeless.

Advocates for the homeless said the numbers seemed in line with what has happened during previous cold spells, when the city dispatches teams to find those in danger and bring them to shelters.

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Antonio Poudreau, standing on a subway grate near Penn Station on Tuesday, said the police didn’t offer to take him to a shelter.CreditChristopher Lee for The New York Times

There was no evidence that the executive order Mr. Cuomo issued on Sunday calling for homeless people to be removed from the streets for their own safety was having a meaningful impact, according to the advocates.

Police Commissioner William J. Bratton told reporters on Monday that he did not expect the order to change the approach of the police or other authorities.

“I don’t see that the governor’s executive order changes anything that we do, that we haven’t already been doing,” he said.

Still, Mr. Cuomo reiterated his call for more urgent action.

“The homeless problem says to each of us, how do you believe we should treat one another?” he said on Tuesday. “We as New Yorkers have to admit the truth. The problem is getting worse. It’s worse than it has been in years. It’s unacceptable. We will not tolerate it. It must change. We’re not leaving our brothers and sisters in the street to freeze.”

Mary E. Brosnahan, the president and chief executive of the Coalition for the Homeless, said that while she was still waiting on numbers from the city, the advocacy group had not received any reports of people being forcibly removed from the streets on Tuesday.

In October, there were 59,568 homeless people, including 14,361 families with 23,858 children, sleeping in the New York City municipal shelter system each night. Families make up nearly four-fifths of the homeless shelter population.

The authorities can force people off the streets only if they appear to be mentally ill and pose a threat of harm to themselves or others. In the past, efforts to force people into shelters have been struck down by the courts.

The seeming increase in the number of people sleeping on the streets recently has driven the issue of homelessness to the top of the political agenda for both the mayor and the governor.

But even with more aggressive outreach efforts, some people refuse to go into shelters.

A homeless man in Pennsylvania Station who gave only his first name, Michael, said that around midnight on Monday a police officer checked on him and a group of others.

“They just asked if we wanted a ride” to a shelter, he said, but he declined.

“I’ve been there before and I didn’t like it,” he said.

Another man, who gave his name as Clarence, said employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority asked him on a train in the Bronx on Monday night if he wanted to be taken to a shelter, but he said he had bad memories of them.

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Ashton Griffith, 27, asked for change outside of a subway station in Harlem on Tuesday.CreditChristopher Lee for The New York Times

“I don’t mess with it now,” he said.

Later Tuesday morning, he pushed a cart with his belongings to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and used the bathroom before going to the basement to join several others on the floor and sleeping.

For Clarence and many others, the subways and other transportation centers were shelter enough in the predawn hours Tuesday.

On a C train in Manhattan at 5 a.m., one car had five homeless people. The next car had three more, and the car after that had another three.

When approached by a reporter, most of those on the subway gave no reply.

At Penn Station, police officers asked Maureen Ollivierre, 62, if she was warm and secure.

“They haven’t asked if I’m going to a shelter,” she said, pushing a cart filled with blankets. “But they did not harass me. They’re very good.”

In the New Jersey Transit section of the station, dozens of homeless people, some without shoes, others with severe physical disabilities, some who identified themselves by the names Silly Rabbit and Smoke Battle, paced the floors and slept on steps.

Outside, a group of young men shivered atop a subway grate blowing scant warm air on 32nd Street near Broadway. Jonathan Martinez, 26, who is from Newark and has been homeless for two years, said that no police officers had approached him in the night, but that he would not have gone to a shelter if they offered.

“It’s freezing, but no thanks,” he said.

Ashton Griffith, 27, who is from Tampa, Fla., and has been homeless in New York for two years, agreed.

He clasped a blanket around him outside the East 125th Street subway station, shivering, his nose running.

He also spent the night riding subways in the Bronx and said his only interaction with the police was around midnight, when an officer told him to sit up straight.

“I’d rather sleep in a train than go to a shelter,” he said. “It’s nothing but fights with staff and people who live there. It’s animal mentality.”